James Madison University JMU Scholarly Commons Masters Theses The Graduate School Spring 2017 God’s silent witnesses: Protestant chaplains in the Canadian Military, 1939-1945 John M. MacInnis James Madison University Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/master201019 Part of the Military History Commons Recommended Citation MacInnis, John M., "God’s silent witnesses: Protestant chaplains in the Canadian Military, 1939-1945" (2017). Masters Theses. 505. https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/master201019/505 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the The Graduate School at JMU Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of JMU Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. God’s Silent Witnesses: Protestant Chaplains in the Canadian Military, 1939-1945 John Michael MacInnis A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of History May 2017 FACULTY COMMITTEE: Committee Chair: Dr. Michael Galgano Committee Members/ Readers: Dr. Michael Seth Dr. Andrew Witmer Dedication For my friends, family, and loved ones who kept me sane during graduate school. Ad maiorem Dei gloriam ii Acknowledgments Many thanks to the Graduate School for their financial assistance in my travel to France this past summer. The experience of going to Normandy was vital in the creation of this thesis. My time in France could not have been possible without Dr. Galgano and Normandy Allies leading the trip, it was a truly unforgettable experience. Dr. Galgano has also been an immense help in guiding me academically throughout my college career. iii Table of Contents Dedication…………………………………………………………………...ii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………..iii List of Figures……………………………………………………………….v Abstract…………………………………………………………………….vi Introduction………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter One: Call to Action…………………………………………………4 Chapter Two: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff……………………….26 Chapter Three: Through the Valley of Death……………………………....49 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….74 Bibliography………………………………………………………………..79 iv List of Figures Fig. 1: Chaplain John Forth displaying his communion set……………….67 Fig. 2: Regimental aid party assisting a wounded soldier…….……...……69 Fig. 3: A chaplain conducting a burial service…………...……………….72 v Abstract This thesis documents the establishment and growth of the Canadian Protestant Chaplain Services during the Second World War. Bishop George Wells, the head of the Protestant Chaplaincy Service, defined the chaplains’ role as “providing for the men’s spiritual and moral welfare.” Despite having such an important role in maintaining the faith of their men, chaplains of the Second World War have been largely ignored within Canadian historiography. One goal of this thesis is to bring to light the story of these men who had to juggle not only their own faith, but the faith of their men in extraordinary circumstances. Chapter one describes the difficulty in creating such a service, including infighting among churches and combatting a societal shift towards pacifism that occurred in the 1930s. Chapter two investigates Bishop Well’s role as head of the Chaplaincy service, both his attempts to recruit men and his own racial and religious bias in selecting chaplains. Chapter three examines the work of chaplains on the front lines, and their ability to look after the faith of their men. vi Introduction My generation has not lived through a major conflict. The more removed we become; the more apt we are to view the sacrifice of many as distant and to take it for granted. The reasons for committing to a cause is lost on a generation who largely live comfortably and secure. The irony, of course, is found in the hope of those who left family, friends, and country to engage an enemy that threatened the peace and freedom of the world. It was the goal of our grandparents to set upon a course to ensure that their children might never again sharpen the tools of war to defend the survival of entire nations. It is in this achievement that the extent of their sacrifice is minimized. November 11th somehow becomes a day when old soldiers parade, wear medals, and honor their fallen comrades. It is their remembrance not ours. We are a generation who have neither the time nor the inclination to reflect upon the sacrifices of the past. From 1939-1945 the youth of the Allied nations answered the call of war. The reasons for going were many. They went to do something worthwhile; they went because they were lured by the excitement of war; they went because it was the thing to do; they went because it meant you were a somebody; they went to serve humanity. Many of these soldiers can look back to an individual whose actions under the most trying of conditions proved to be influential. Men rallied around him, felt safe in his presence, felt strength from his example. Often these influential men were chaplains. My academic interest with chaplains arose from a trip to Normandy this past summer. As someone who has always been interested in religious history, I noticed 2 something underrepresented in the many museums we visited in France, that being the faith of the men involved. Very few exhibits focused on the faith of the men involved, and even fewer focused on the physical representation of faith in the battlefield, the chaplain. It was in the lobby of the Mémorial de Caen that I decided to focus on military chaplains for this thesis. This underrepresentation is also why I chose to focus on Canadian chaplains. In both the historiography and in the museums of Normandy, less attention has been given to the sacrifice of the Canadian forces and to the work on Canadian chaplains than compared to their American and British counterparts even at the Canadian Museum on Juno Beach. With this thesis, I hope to show the relevance of Canadian chaplains during the Second World War. While their sacrifice has been largely forgotten, chaplains played a vital role on the battlefield and formed important relationships with their men that supported them in combat and eventually victory. The first chapter will look to outline the historiography of Canadian chaplains, and will examine the complications of Canada’s entry into the war and the creation of the Chaplaincy Service.1 The second chapter will detail the process of recruiting and training chaplains, and the final chapter will focus on the chaplains’ work in combat. My goal is to help this and future generations to understand the important role of chaplains and to celebrate their heroism that helped preserve freedom for everyone. The department was generous enough to give me the financial resources to conduct research in Ottawa last semester. I was able to go through a modest amount of 1 Also to as “CCS” in this work. 3 material during my few days there, but there are many boxes in Ottawa that would have benefited this thesis tremendously if I had the time and resources at my disposal. Many of the large mainline Protestant denominations of Canada have archives themselves that I was unable to visit. Archives however house the journals and correspondence of only a handful of chaplains. My guess would be that such material is kept by the chaplains themselves or their families, and it may be many years before these documents end up available to the public. I have used the published memoirs of chaplains to fill this gap. These memoirs were published anywhere from five years to two decades following the war. Given the nature of these sources it is important to give them a caveat. Memories are malleable and fragile, they often fade or are corrupted by the memories of others. Despite this, these memoirs give firsthand perspective that has proved invaluable to this thesis. 4 Chapter One: Call to Action Canadian historian Duff Crerar said of the military chaplain, “the field padre’s mind often filled with traumatic memories: the smell of death, awe and horror at the extent of destructiveness of man…the horrors of burying men long dead and often blown to pieces or burned to cinders, and incredible physical and spiritual exhaustion.”2 His quote personifies the work of chaplains in the Canadian forces during the Second World War. They were a beacon of hope in an intensely inhumane conflict. In the Second World War, 1253 Canadian ministers, priests and rabbis volunteered as full-time chaplains. Of the 1253, 807 were Protestant Ministers, 446 were Roman Catholic priests, and 10 were Jewish rabbis.3 These men experienced the horrors of the front line without a weapon, they relied on their faith and the men they were serving to get them through times of intense combat. Despite their constant presence, Canadian chaplains have been largely overlooked by historians. When one examines what little historical literature has been written about the chaplains, one constantly encounters this familiar absence. These expressions are justifiable, as Canadian chaplains, if for no other reason than the virtue of their constant presence, are worthy of historical study. Indeed, they played a very important role in the history of the Canadian military and Canada’s experience of war: a role that should be neither overlooked nor forgotten. By examining the Second World War experience of the 2 Duff Crerar, “In the Day of Battle: Canadian Catholic Chaplains in the Field, 1885-1945,” CCHA, Historical Studies, 61 (1995): 76. 3 Crerar, “In the Day of Battle”, 80. 5 Canadian forces through the eyes of its chaplains, the thesis will seek to evaluate the effectiveness of chaplains in the conflict in regards to keeping their faith and maintaining the faith of their men. By taking into account the lessons learned during the First World War, the Canadian Chaplaincy Service was able to be more effective during the Second World War.